Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/246

 236 Southern Historical Society Papers.

contains a copy of the Declaration of Independence and of the Constitution of the United States. It has the stock " questions for review." It has a number of biographical notes at the end of each chapter, some very good, all gotten up with the aim of pleasing everybody and offending no one. Thus especial care is taken to put in laudatory notices of some of the Southern leaders in the civil war. But when we look farther than this into the real merits of the book, we find little to commend.

1. It is strongly partisan, not in using unseemly language about South- ern men and institutions, but in the pictures it presents of historical facts, and the description it gives of historical characters. A single instance will illustrate. On page 268 we find the following: "The Supreme Court of the United States decided that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional, and that slaves might be carried into any territory of the Union. But this was contrary to the ordinance of 1787, which prohibited slavery in the northwest territory." Thus, by an unfair and disingenuous statement, the reader is taught that the Supreme Court deliberately destroyed what the author had elsewhere (p. 190) described as "not a mere act of Congress which could be repealed, * * * but a solemn compact between the inhab- itants of the Territory * * * and the people of the thirteen States." The next sentences (p. 268) contain the only allusion to John Brown in the text, and are as follows: "The excitement became greater when John Brown, formerly of Kansas, actually invaded the State of Virginia with a party of about twenty men, for the purpose of liberating slaves. He gained posses- sion of the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, thinking to arm the negroes, whom he expected to join him. He was easily captured — his party being either killed or dispersed— and was tried, convicted, and put to death under the laws of Virginia."

" Invaded the State of Virginia " is good ! We hear nothing, however, of Booth and his accomplices "invading" Washington, and attacking Presi- dent Lincoln and Secretary Seward. They are murderers. Contrast with this description of John Brown the following, on page 276, which the author adopts from Mr. Lincoln's inaugural address:

" He threw upon the politicians of the South the whole responsibility of the calamities which must follow the destruction of the Union, assuring them there could be no conflict unless they themselves should choose to begin it." It is a cruel outrage to teach the children of those men who died for the South on every field from Gettysburg to the Rio Grande such stuff as this.

This kind of tone is not confined to the author's chapters on the war. Even those on the settlement of Virginia and of Massachusetts show the same.

2. The book is shamefully inaccurate. The following is the description of the first battle of Manassas on page 278 : " General Beauregard commanded the Confederate army of 40,000 men; General McDowell's forces consisted of a nearly equal number of volunteers for ninety days. For six hours the Northern men stood their ground, and kept or regained all their positions. The Confederates were once broken and driven a mile and a-half from the field, but they were rallied by Stonewall Jackson, whose inflexible bravery